Face Your Mistakes
by lady-warrioress
Summary: What if Rorschach hadn't died at the end of Watchmen?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The evening was quiet and still. The sky was clear and a full moon hung high in the air, it's silver rays creating a sort of gray covering on the roof of the little cabin by the lake. Inside the cabin only one light was on and it was in the living room.

On the small TV resting against the far wall a news report about an incident in New York City was being broad casted. For the moment it was ignored but when a girl in her late teens entered the room, holding a mug of hot chocolate and sat down on the sofa it became the center of attention. She picked up the remote and turned the volume up very loud so she could hear everything.

As she listened with rapt attention about an attack on the city with some kind of weapon of destruction that took out a lot of the city the hairs on her arms suddenly stood on end and she began to feel really anxious.

Just as she turned to rub her arm there was a loud noise, like a sonic boom and then she was being knocked clear off her feet as the house was suddenly shook with some kind of air pressure blast. As she fell to the floor a bright blue flash of light burst before her eyes for a second before everything became dark and quiet again.

Gasping, she pushed herself up, blinking away the after image of the flash. She looked around herself noticing broken knick knacks laying helter skelter on the hard wood floor. "What-"

Outside there was a loud splash that broke the sudden silence as the flash of light had briefly knocked out all the power.

Something had fallen into the lake!

Scrambling to her feet, she rushed to the window and looked outside. In the pale light of the moon she could just make out a figure thrashing in the water. They seemed to be in trouble.

Thinking quickly, she rushed out of the house and toward the water, rushing across the dock and diving head first into the lake and swimming directly toward the person in trouble. She reached them within minutes and, swimming up behind them, grabbed the person around the waist and headed back to shore, trying hard to keep a tight grip on the thrashing drowning victim.

Once she reached the shore and drag the person out of the water and onto the sand. Once they were a safe distance out of the water she let them go and leaned over them, staring worriedly into the person's shadowed face.

"Ar-are you okay?" she asked.

The moment she did this the person grabbed her by the front of her soaked sweater and stared into her eyes with fiery brown ones. "A lie!" he cried out in a gravely tone. "All lies!"

"What?" she asked.

This action seemed to drain all the person's energy and his eyes rolled back in his head before he fell back, his grip on her going limp before releasing her. His hand fell lifelessly to the sand.

The girl gasped, thinking the victim had died right before her eyes. She acted quickly, reaching forward and undid the scarf around his neck to make it easier to breath before yanking his dirty, brown trench coat open and resting her ear on his chest. She could hear his heart beating strong and sighed in relief. He was only unconscious.

But he was still in trouble. She had to do something about him now. Her first thought was to call an ambulance but there was no phone in the cabin and her closest neighbor was five miles away. She would have to take care of him herself.

With this decided she got up and walked around him before grabbing him under his armpits and slowly drug his lifeless body into the cabin.

Once inside she let him go and his body flopped onto the hardwood floor as she went around him to close the front door before going around him again to drag him into a bedroom. when she got him in there she drug him to the bed and with a lot of effort managed to put him on the bed. After she did so she turned on the light on the nightstand and sat down beside him, leaning over to slap his cheeks.

"Come on," she whispered. "wake up."

The man groaned and she stopped, watching his face contort as he came to once more. His eyes popped open and he grabbed her again, yanking her downward. She let out a yelp and reacted defensively grabbing the digital clock on the nightstand and cracking him over the head with it.

He grunted and let her go, instantly blacking out and falling limply to the bed. She pulled away, gasping and grabbing at her throat. She stood over him for a moment, breathing heavily. The blow she'd given him had been pretty heavy and he didn't stir.

Had she killed him?

Cautiously she leaned over him again to be sure. No, she discovered, she hadn't. He was out cold but alive. The girl sighed and leaned back, feeling terrible. She hadn't meant to hit him so hard but when he'd grabbed her like that she hadn't been thinking. Due to past experience her body had developed a defensive mechanism that made her react instantly if anyone did such a thing to her. She reached her hand out to touch the spot where she'd hit him. There was a nice lump forming, obvious evidence that he wouldn't be coming around any time soon.

The girl rushed out of the room to get a ice pack to put on the lump she'd given him. After she'd done that she decided to finish up what she'd been doing for him previously. She proceeded to remove his shoes, coat and pinstripe suit. When he was only in his underwear she began to pull a blanket over him when she stopped, noticing his skin was covered in burns. They looked like thermal burns . They were red and swollen with blisters. She winced deciding against covering him. If he woke up it would only make him feel worse. She left him uncovered and carried the wet clothing out of the room and into the laundry room where she dropped it in a soaking wet heap on the floor before she went into the bedroom to shower and change.

After her shower she checked on the man who was still unconscious and did her best to treat the burns on his body, rubbing aloe on them before wrapping them lightly in cold gauze before she sat down in the living room and continued watching the coverage about the New York attack. But she couldn't keep her mind on it. She kept thinking about the strange earthquake that had knocked her off the couch and this strange man who'd suddenly appeared in the lake. She felt like those two things were related but she had no idea how. They could have just been a pair of coincidences.

But she didn't live near anyone and if this person had come out of town decided to take a dip why would he have done so wearing what he had? Even in such cold November weather swimmers usually at least stripped down to their underpants before jumping in. She went over the questions over and over but no answers came and she finally sighed and turned off the TV before returning to the bedroom.

Before the girl had taken her shower she'd gone through the man's clothing to try to find some kind of ID but she had found nothing except a piece of white cloth with black ink stains on it. Whoever this man was or wherever he came from would have to be something she found out from the man himself. It seemed pretty evident that whoever he was he was determined to remain anonymous.

The man was still unconscious and hadn't seemed to have moved since she'd left him there when she checked on him. She was a little disappointed but she was partly to blame for that since she'd hit him so hard. Hopefully he would come to soon.

"I hope so..." she said quietly to herself and she slowly closed the door. "Then he can give me some answers. "

* * *

The snow floated in the air as if frozen in place, the wind that had been whipping the air previously had gone completely still. Standing on the ice not too far from where he stood was a figure shrouded in a blue light. It was so bright there was no way of telling if it were human or something else.

"What are you waiting for? DO IT!"

A flash of light, an explosion crashing loudly as his body was rent into pieces and then...

Nothing...

* * *

With a loud gasp of air, he woke, sitting up instantly grabbing his chest, eyes darting around looking for the blue being. But there was nothing, no snow frozen in time, no humanoid creature. Just an empty bedroom and silence. He winced and removed his hand looking down to find his body wrapped in some kind of bandages. With that realization came the pain, his body protesting his movements as the half healed burns under the bandages protested.

With this came a memory and his hands clenched in fists as his mind raced with questions and a realization. He was alive.

But how and why? For all intents and purposes he should be dead right now, nothing more than a bloody stain on the Antarctic ice. So how was he still there? How was his body still in one piece?

Had it all been a dream?

"No..." the word came from a voice box that hadn't been used in a long time. It was gravelly and flat. Certain.

The events that should have lead to his demise had happened from the Death of the Comedian to his confrontation with Dr. Manhattan in the wastes of the earth's coldest continent.

Walter Kovacs, also known as Rorschach should be dead.

So why wasn't he?

Before he could mull over thus further, the sound of footsteps reached his ears and he tensed up, his brown eyes locking on the closed bedroom door. A few seconds later the door opened and someone stepped inside.

It was a girl, maybe in her late teens, with short brown hair and large brown eyes. She was wearing a blue and white diner girl waitress outfit. When she saw that he was sitting up the girl paused and stared at him for a couple of seconds before saying in a voice that was halfway between relieved and nervous. "You're finally wake."

Walter Kovacs stared at the girl without uttering a single word. Who was this kid and what- The answer came to him before he even finished formulating the question. This girl was somehow responsible for the condition he was in right now.

She was also still acting nervous and he saw her shifting her weight from foot to foot. "Um..." she said, her voice wobbling slightly. "Can you hear me?" When he still said nothing she continued, rubbing the back of her neck. "Er... do you want anything? Like foot or something? I mean you've been out for awhile and I thought you might be hungry when you woke up..."

A while? What did she mean by that? ow long had he been there? In fact where was he?!

The girl seemed to see the questions in his eyes and did her best to explain to him how he'd wound up at her house. "Er... if you're wondering where you are you're in my cabin," she told him, still keeping her distance. "You fell into the lake and were drowning. I had to save you-"

"Lake?!" The girl jumped when he spoke. She obviously hadn;t expected him to speak.

"Um, yes, the lake," she said. "I had to get you out of there and brought you here." she raised her hands and let them fall to her sides. "You could have drowned."

Her answer still made no sense especially since the last location he was aware of being was on the very southern continent of the planet. How could some random girl in a cabin even live in such a place? "Where... Where am I?"

He saw her expression become slightly bothered by this question. "New York state." was her answer.

What?!

How in the world had he wound up in a lake in the middle of New York state from Antarctica? Why was he even asking himself this? He should be dead right now after all. If he was there it meant one thing Dr. Manhattan hadn't killed him but had sent him there, it was the only thing that made any sense right now. He didn't know why Manhattan would do that but he probably had a reason, or he simply made a mistake.

"Excuse me." The girl's voice broke into his thoughts before he could contemplate it further. He turned his attention back to her.

* * *

He was awake, this was good. It was a real relief to her after spending quit a few weeks keeping an eye on him and caring for him the entire time he'd been unconscious. Every day she'd come home from her job at the diner and checked on him to see if there was any change but she'd received nothing.

But she had learned who he was even if he hadn't been the one who told her. During the days after she'd taken him in she had come across a news story covering a breakout in at Sing Sing. The piece had featured a picture of the person of interest two other people had helped escape. It had been a picture of the man in her house. Walter Kovacs also known as Rorschach, a masked vigilante who had until recently been illegally fighting crime in the city of New York.

After she had learned who he was, she could have told the local authorities she had the man at her home but something had prevented her from doing so. Why she wasn't exactly sure, since he was a wanted criminal. Maybe it had to do with the fact that even though what he'd been doing was illegal he'd been doing it to better the world for everyone else.

So she had taken care of him herself which was lucky for both of them that she'd decided to get a degree in nursing when she entered college so she had been studying for it using whatever books on nursing she had found at the library. Even so, she'd expected him to eventually die on her and it made her feel a whole lot better to see him actually awake.

"Are you hungry?" she asked now once she'd regained his attention. "Like I said you've been unconscious for quite awhile and I just thought you might be hungry if and when you finally woke up..."

Hungry... He hadn't thought about it until she mentioned it. He was hungry and his stomach suddenly growled.

She heard the sound and smiled lightly. "I guess that answers my question. Would you like me to make you something? Anything specific?"

He shrugged and she left the room deciding just to make whatever and hoping he ate it. Since he'd been unconscious for quite awhile she was sure he wouldn't complain to anything she gave him. She decided just to make him something simple and went into the kitchen to make some chicken soup.

Meanwhile Walter was still sitting in the bed, trying to figure out a few things. The fact he was alive still bothered him and so did knowing that Dr. Manhattan had let him live, whether intentionally or not. Surely he knew that by not ending Kovac's life the truth behind the attack on New York would come out. Or maybe he had figured even if Walter did make this knowledge public nobody would believe him.

Could that be it? Was that the reason he let him live? If so why would he send him to some out of the way place like this and not into the city where he could tell people? Nothing was making any sense and his head was beginning to hurt trying to make a logical conclusion.

Maybe now would be a good time to put those thoughts in the back of his mind temporarily. He had other things to worry about and they were a lot more personal.

Or at least figure out what he was going to do now. His body was telling him for one thing he should relieve himself and another part was saying that trying to do too much movement would be an unwise decision.

First things first, though.

With very careful movements so not to make the burns on his body protest too much he got out of the bed and stood, what surprised that he actually could do this at all. After taking a few experimental steps and not falling flat on his face he walked slowly and carefully toward the door.

Only to open it and find the girl standing right on the other end with a mug in her hands. The moment she saw him she gasped and nearly dropped the ceramic cup but quickly got ahold of herself.

"What are you doing up?" she asked.

Well he wasn't going to be mysterious about it. "Bathroom."

"Oh." she stepped back to let him come out and showed him down the hall, staying close to him in case he might fall over. The entire time she was saying he shouldn't even be up since he had just woken up from being unconscious for quite an extended period of time and even waited outside the bathroom while he went inside to do his business. It was a little unsettling but he could tell this girl was only doing it because she was worried... and a bit too trusting.

He finished up quickly and discovered the girl waiting for him when he came out. She looked relieved that he'd managed the whole thing without needing assistance but insisted he get back into bed so she could give him something to eat. Walter, not being used to this sort of thing, was a little put off by the whole thing but seeing as she'd saved his life, or so she claimed, and even kept him there and told nobody about it, he would go along with it for now.

Plus he was hungry.

 _A/N_

 _Before you ask anything or get angry this idea came to me after thinking about the ending of Watchmen for awhile. I know I'm not the only person who was saddened by Rorschach's death. This story is just a "what if" AU where instead of Manhattan killing Walter he unintentionally teleports him away. Please don't think I am downplaying anything that happened in the comic/movie, I'm not. I have some really interesting ideas I want to use for this story but you'll just have to keep reading to find out what those are. :D Next chapter will be longer._


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The soup was good, he admitted, though he was pretty sure it had come from a can, not from her making it herself. Of course he said nothing about it either way partly because she'd left him alone after giving it to him because she wanted to give him some privacy but he knew she was lurking around in the hall waiting for him to finish but not just that. He knew she had questions for him and he was not looking forward to giving her any answers.

As it turned out she _was_ waiting for him to finish and even poked her face in a few times to check. It was a little unsettling. If she wanted to keep an eye on him why didn't she just come in the room and wait for him to finish eating? It would be a whole lot less weird than it was now.

When she peeked in again he set his food down and stared at her. She froze, their eyes locking. Her eyes widened and she let out an, "I'm sorry!" before she closed the door once more.

She didn't look in one him anymore as he ate. In fact she didn't come back for at least an hour. That didn't bother him, maybe she'd found something else to do that didn't involve spying on him. If she wasn't going to come back then all the more good for him. At least it gave him some time to study the interior of the bedroom she' put him in.

The walls seemed bare, except for a pale colored paint job and a few photographs of the local wildlife hanging on the walls in picture frames. The floor was hardwood with no carpeting and on his right next to the bed was a nightstand with a digital clock and a lamp and nothing more. To his far left was a rather large window which, along with a few trees growing outside, framed a rather pretty view of the lake which was a short walk from the cabin. Across the lake were more trees and beyond that a dense forest.

It didn't take a genius to realize that wherever this place was there was nobody else there for miles. Maybe this was intentional, he'd noticed the girl couldn't be much older than seventeen at the oldest. She could be a run away which was why she lived there where nobody could find her.

Or he was making unwarranted observations about the person who'd been taking care of him for who knows how long. Speaking of that he still had to ask her some questions. Maybe she could tell him how he wound up there, though he'd pretty much figured that part out himself. He just wanted to be sure.

But he didn't call out for her, knowing full well she would eventually come back into the room on her own. As he continued to wait he set the mug on the nightstand. He'd finished up the soup and the mug had grown cold. The moment he put it down he heard the door open and turned his head. The girl was poking her head into the room and now she did ask. "Are you done?"

This time he nodded and she came inside to retrieve the mug. She reached out for it and he grabbed her wrist. She looked at him. "Want to talk." he said to her.

"About what?" she asked a slight tremble in her voice.

"The events of the night you helped me out of the lake." he said.

She paused a moment as if letting his words sink in. She'd explained what had happened earlier and besides wouldn't he know this already? Maybe he'd forgotten and figured if he questioned her about it it would help jog his memory.

She nodded. "Okay. What would you like to know?"

"Everything."

She sat down on the edge of the bed, a good distance from him at the front and began her story. "Well.. I was inside the house watching TV when suddenly there was this loud explosion that knocked me off the sofa and then this huge flash of light."

"Flash of light?" he cut her off. "What color was it?"

She paused, thinking carefully. "Well it was a blueish white color. Really bright. It only lasted for a few seconds though. After that I heard a splash and looked outside and saw you in the lake thrashing around like you were drowning. So I dived into the lake and got you out."

"Hmm..."

"That's all that happened," she said.

"Are you sure?" he pressed her.

"Well when I took you to shore you started going on about something," she told him. "You started yelling about people lying to you."

His attention seemed to grow with this. "What did I say?"

"They lied," she told him. "That's all you said. "They lied"." she looked him right in the eyes. "Who did you mean?"

He turned his gaze away from her suddenly being evasive. "Nobody." he told her.

He could tell she was having a hard time believing him. "You sure?" she asked.

"Yes."

She didn't press it.

"So... did that help?" she asked him after a moment. "Do you know how you wound up here?"

"No." he lied.

"Oh..." she looked disappointed. "Well maybe it will come to you with time." she got up with the mug as if to leave. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of much help."

She went out of the room, leaving Walter to his thoughts. Obviously his first guess had been right and the girl's description of the explosive sounds and the bright bluish light told him that, though it still gave him no clues as to why.

"Hnnggh..."

He pushed himself out of the bed and headed to the window, wincing with pain when his side started hurting. Obviously that wound hadn't healed properly. Ozymordius could hit pretty hard for a spoiled rich boy. Most of his other wounds had healed though, like the cuts he'd received to his face after the police had beaten him up after he'd escaped Moloch's apartment.

Walter placed his hands on the windowsill and let out a sigh as he rested his head on the cold glass. He thought about what the girl had told him. She'd said he's insisted someone had lied about something when she'd pulled him out of the water though he hadn't said who or what.

Maybe it was better he hadn't told her ,she might have contacted someone about it and in the current condition he was in he would have been taken away and locked up some place where he wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.

Which brought up some other problems and questions that he really didn't feel up to thinking about at that time, dwelling on it was making his head hurt.

So he focused his attention on the view outside the window. At least didn't take a whole lot of brain power to see. He noticed snow was beginning to fall. He wasn't sure how long he'd been there but he assumed he'd been unconscious long enough for winter to have come along.

"Snow..."

Suddenly his mind flashed back to when he'd confronted Manhattan outside the Antarctic lab and he gasped, backing away from the window as an alien panic hit him. He nearly tripped over himself but managed to regain his footing. He sat back onto the bed behind him, hand on his chest as he tried to regain his composure.

It took a few moments for his heart rate to to settle down but once it was normal he clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. It seemed he'd gained a mild form of PTSD from the encounter.

"Not good."

* * *

The girl had taken the mug into the kitchen to wash it after she had answered Walter's questions. As she washed the ceramic cup she thought about the conversion. The man had acted pretty startled when she'd mentioned to him about his claims of somebody lying but she didn't have any idea why.

Maybe whoever had lied was involved in something big and whatever it was they had been dishonest about had hurt a lot of people. But what could that be and who was it to begin with? She didn't know but she was beginning to feel like she should, as if it were a very important event.

"I should have asked him about it," she said quietly, drying the mug and putting it away. "Whatever it is it sure had him upset." she closed the cabinet and headed back into the laundry room where Walter's Rorschach costume was hanging.

She stood there briefly, taking in the tattered leather trench coat, purple pinstripe suit and off white scarf. "Very very upset..."

Suddenly her ears picked up the faint sound of a door opening. Turning away from the costume she quickly closed the door and stared down the hallway toward the guest room. She could see the man had opened the door and was looking out. He caught her gaze and the two stared quietly at one another.

The stare off only ended when she asked him. "Umm do you need anything?"

"No." he relied, his voice a quiet monotone.

"No?" she asked. "you sure."

"Yes." and he closed the door.

The girl sighed, turning her attention back toward the closed door of the laundry room. "Something tells me he just lied to me." she headed back into the kitchen, taking something out of the apron pocket of her work uniform. A white mask with black ink stains. "If he is it must be for a good reason..."

For the rest of the day Walter stayed in his room and the girl didn't bother him. When she was beginning to get ready for bed and checked in on him, discovering that he was sitting on the side of the bed, just staring out the window. He seemed to be lost in thought.

The girl closed the door without a word, not wanting to bother him, and continued her before bed preparations. After she'd showered and changed into a comfortable pair of pajamas she made herself a cup of hot cocoa and sat down in the living room to watch the news. The living room was the only part of the house with a TV hooked up to the antennae attached to the roof of the house.

While she didn't have a lot of channels the device was strong enough to pick up a few that were local. Since she didn't watch TV often anyway except to watch the news the device tended to need moving around a lot when she wanted to watch anything and she usually wound up getting up to move the wire around. However tonight the TV gods were smiling down on her and she didn't have to go through electric acrobatics to get anything to come in clear.

Sighing she leaned back on the sofa and sipped her cocoa as she watched the reporters read from their scripts and tell their viewers all the horrible things happening in the world. It was rather depressing really. While the horrible accident in the city in November had managed to prevent a third world war people were still people and even in the face of Armageddon they still did awful things to one another.

She frowned as the reporter relayed stories of house break ins, fires, rapes and murders with all the emotion of a person doing laundry, it made her stomach turn. She raised the remote to change the channel when a voice spoke up, startling her. "Leave it."

She jumped, surprised by the voice and turned her head, astonished to see the man she knew as Rorschach standing in the doorway, his brown eyes locked on the television screen. "Want to watch this."

"Uh... OK..." she kindly turned up the volume so he could hear it better and left him watch it.

Walter's attention remained fixed on the TV screen as the news reporters relayed the news. The current story being covered involved Adrian Alexander Veidt and his mega cooperation. The girl never really paid much attention to the man when he would show up on TV herself as she felt he seemed to be full of himself and acted like he knew what was best for everyone but she noticed Rorschach seemed to be hanging onto every word the man said throughout the interview.

She had been way too young to know or care that the two men had once been part of a costumed hero crime fighting group in the sixties and early seventies before the Keene Act had been passed so she could only guess as to why he even cared about anything the pompous blow hard had to say.

Maybe it was important, she told herself. If Rorschach is that interested in what he has to say maybe I should be too.

But when her mind finally tuned into the interview it was drawing to a close and all she picked up on was "... and I should hope that with this new found peace the world will begin to take steps toward a total global community."

She heard Rorschach let out a snort of disgust and looked back at him as the interview ended and the video feed returned to the news room. The voices of the reporters faded out as she took in the look of distaste on the man's face , as if he'd just tasted something rotten.

"Are you okay?" she asked him.

He let out a grunt and turned away, heading back to his room. She watched him go, thoroughly confused. Why had he been so revolted by the Veidt interview? Sure the man was rather full of himself but he hadn't said anything controversial. Maybe he just didn't like the man for some reason. She was tempted to get up and go ask him but held herself back, thinking better of it. Whatever it was that bothered him about the other man was his business, if he felt it was okay to tell her about it he would do so in his own time.

She doubted it but she wouldn't allow herself to be bothered too much about it. Some things were better left alone. She turned off the TV and went to bed.

* * *

Walter did not sleep well that night. His mind was too full of problems he was trying to create conclusions too. Of course there was the whole thing where Dr. Manhattan spared his life. Maybe he'd decided to do so while also putting him in a position where he couldn't do anything about the New York Incident. He'd allowed him to live by placing him where he could not contact anyone but was able to see the outcome of the world due to the incident.

So far the world seemed to be turning and no further talk about a global war was being featured in the news but the small problems of earth had not changed. Humans were still humans and the evil they did and continued to do hadn't changed. He'd witnessed it that very night while watching TV.

Gangs, thugs, whores, murderers, rapists, racists... they were still around and weren't going anywhere and they seemed to have become bolder now that he was out of the picture and couldn't prevent many of those incidents from happening.

Walter looked out the window, eyes resting on the lake which shimmered faintly in the moonlight. The world wasn't any different. Adrien had been wrong. It would only continue to get worse as the incident began to fade from memory. Maybe the world wouldn't completely crumble but "peace" created from a lie was not real peace at all.

The world still needed to know the truth, but how was he going to be able to let them know about it? He couldn't call anyone as this place had no phone and the girl didn't seem to own a car or, if she did, she had it hidden some place where he couldn't reach it.

But did he have to be the one to tell them? he wondered, knowing there was the awful truth that anything he said would just be considered the ravings of a mad man. Maybe he could have someone else do it?

The girl?

He took a moment to consider that option.

He had nothing to lose telling her about it. If she didn't believe him then that was it. But if she did she could somehow contact somebody and give them the information. Obviously she worked some place, given she had been wearing a diner uniform and she probably had a good reputation as well. If she told them it was more likely to be considered a fact. Nobody would arrest her, especially if she was anonymous about it.

"I'll tell her," he finally concluded. "I don't have any other choice..."

He started to get up then stopped himself. It was late and it was most likely that she would be asleep by now. What he had to tell her could wait a few more hours.

"No, it can't," he said and headed for the door. The sooner this information got out the sooner the world would know the truth.

That was if the girl believed him. He prayed she did.

So he opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the darkened hall. He listened for a moment, catching no sounds from any of the other rooms. Obviously the girl had gone to bed. It was pretty late and she probably had to get up early to go to work. While he felt hesitant because of this, it wouldn't take very long for him to tell her what he knew and if it did take long she could always make up for the sleep she lost later on.

After a few minutes he manged to find the girl's room and stepped inside pausing for a moment to get a look around.

Her room was as sparsely furnished as his own. The furnishings consisted of a night stand a dresser and a bed. There was a small throw rug on the hard wood floor that had a picture of a mountain on it. The walls has a few pictures hanging which had black and white snapshots of a man, a woman, and a child. He assumed it was her family.

The girl, now an adult was laying in bed, sleeping soundly. She was the reason he'd even come in here.

Walter crossed the room and then leaned over the girl, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving her a shake. She woke with a start and swung at him. He dodged the blow, jerking his head back just in time.

He grabbed her fist as it passed him and she stared up at his face with wide eyes. He reached over with his free hand and turned on the lamp. Now she could see his face in the pale light and she gasped. "You! What are yo-"

"Must talk," he said, cutting her off. "Important."

The girl stared at his face for a little longer, allowing his words to sink in before she, without a word, nodded.


End file.
